Clinic
w/ Kingsbury Manx, Minus the Bear

I-Spy, Sat Mar 23, $10.

I have a theory that quality rock music rotates through culture on a 14-year cycle. I base this on two musically significant time markers: 1977 and 1991. If you use the historical bookends provided by the chaos unleashed with the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks in 1977 and the industry upheaval caused by Nirvana's Nevermind in 1991, you can calculate that we are currently experiencing a musical climate reflective of 1988.

In 1988, we had a Republican White House armed and ready to annihilate the Middle East (check), and the airwaves were swollen with the saccharine sounds of Debbie Gibson (Britney Spears) and New Kids on the Block (*NSYNC). Outlets for rebellious middle-American youth were limited to hair-metal honchos like Whitesnake (Creed) and Mötley Crüe (Limp Bizkit). People were actually buying singles recorded by movie stars like Patrick Swayze (Nicole Kidman), and the record industry was predicting its own demise via home taping (file swapping).

The good thing about 1988 was that it proved to be a highly formative time for the underground. Sonic Youth released Daydream Nation and Public Enemy offered up It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. The Pixies and the Beastie Boys were in the studio recording the best albums of their careers, and the phrase "alternative music" was evoking more agitated expectation than commercialized cynicism.

With that retrospective knowledge in hand, I offer you Clinic. Helped in no small part by the benevolence of Radiohead, the Liverpool quartet is now heading to our shores. It would be premature to christen this band "the next big thing," but a cursory listen to their debut full-length, Internal Wrangler (released last year on Domino Records), makes it easy to think about doing just that.

Clinic operates within the typical rock parameters (drums, bass, guitar) with minor flourishes (melodica, a little fuzzy organ, economical use of samples), but its end result sounds much fuller than the sum of its basic parts. Internal Wrangler opens with "Voodoo Wop," a rhythmic swirl of stark bongo drums surrounded by samples of buzzing bees and oceanic feedback, then segues gently into the band's first single, "The Return of Evil Bill."

The single is a tense wire of garage pop reminiscent of the Velvet Underground's "Waiting for the Man," made addictive by the compelling voice of Ade Blackburn. Embodying the range and penetrative qualities of Sigur Ros' Jon Thor Birgisson, and delivered with the charismatic aggravation of the Violent Femmes' Gordon Gano, Blackburn's voice walks a purposeful line between edginess and euphoria.

The first week I listened to Internal Wrangler, I moved through a conflicted range of emotions, including nervousness, invigoration, and calm, narcotic bliss. I was confused, but in a really good way.

Blackburn and his bandmates continue this sublime tension-dance on Clinic's latest, Walking With Thee, but have taken their surgical skills into much more sinister operating rooms.

The first track, "Harmony," is driven by the familiar edgy pulse of drummer Carl Turney's high-hat, but is drenched in lonely strains of harmonica and a haunting synth line that could have been lifted out of a '70s slasher-film soundtrack. The thrashing elegance of the title track demonstrates both Clinic's greatest strength and its most potentially limiting quality: infatuation with its own melodies. While the atmosphere of Walking With Thee is unquestionably darker than that of the debut, many of the structural arrangements are built with melodies that nearly mirror those found in Internal Wrangler. Frankly, this is a minor quibble. Clinic's formula works, and it's perfectly understandable that a five-year-old band would be playing things somewhat safe on its second record. Especially when the music is suggestive of so much good to come, standing alongside the promising work of contemporaries like the White Stripes, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Grandaddy, and New Pornographers.

These bands may never see a heyday comparable to, say, Nirvana's, or even Radiohead's. And the year 2005 may seem like a long time to wait for a resurgence of worthwhile rock in the mainstream, but bands like Clinic are evidence that there's something worthwhile bubbling beneath the surface.